Which was no choice at all, Zoe acknowledged on an inner flutter of dread mixed up with a treacherous vein of excitement. Javier didn’t make idle threats; he always meant what he said. Her mouth went dry. If she didn’t do exactly as he’d told her to he would scoop her into his arms and carry her. If he touched her she wouldn’t stand a chance. She would go up in flames of delirium.
She turned on her spiky heels and walked back through the house and heard the sound of Guy’s engine. So much for a wild evening out, the prospect of getting Javier out of her head for a few hours.
The prospect of getting him out of her heart would take more than that, she acknowledged glumly. She’d been a fool to think it could be easily accomplished. And now, she supposed, she was in for another lecture!
Zoe was standing in front of one of the tall study windows that overlooked the garden. She turned slowly at his approach, tall, graceful and stunningly lovely. Something tightened around his heart. The golden eyes, so like the topaz ear droppers he’d picked out while passing through London this morning to mark her birthday tomorrow, might be flashing defiance but there was an aching vulnerability about her soft mouth that sent rivers of sweetly sharp compassion flowing through his veins.
He tugged in a deep, shuddering breath and crossed to the drinks cabinet. He took his time over selecting a bottle of red wine, opening it, pouring it into two glasses. Laying down the law over the lack of structure in her present lifestyle would get him nowhere. Her grandmother and the teachers at her boarding-school had tried harsh discipline, resulting not in the desired meek compliance but in open defiance.
Zoe wouldn’t be pushed, but she could be led.
Trouble was, she was no longer a child, a fact brought home as he turned, a glass in each hand, his eyes veiled as he watched her sink into a chair, her long, elegant legs displayed as the narrow skirt of her dress rode up to well above her shapely knees.
A loose cannon was his immediate and uncomfortable thought.
Slender fingers closed round the stem of the glass he offered, one delicate brow rose as she drawled, ‘Wine. How liberal of you. I’d rather expected a can of fizzy pop or a beaker of milk.’
Javier acknowledged the dig with a grim smile. Maybe he had been guilty of treating her like a kid—he’d been guilty of too many things where she was concerned. Time to make amends.
Pale blonde tendrils of hair curved around the slender line of her throat. He could see a pulse beating just above the fabric of her dress where it flowed down to skim the outline of perfectly rounded, unfettered breasts.
His throat tightening, Javier stalked over to the desk, leaned against it, half sitting, facing the glorious creature who was like a bomb primed to go off at any moment. With her stunning looks, her need for the love that had been denied her, she would be easy prey for a man on the make. A man like Oliver Sherman.
And she was his responsibility. A strange idea was forming at the back of his mind. He thrust it aside. Time to get the ball rolling.
‘Picking up on our earlier conversation, what do you intend to do with your future?’ How strangely thick his voice sounded!
Zoe’s tummy lurched. She buried her nose in her glass. Despite all her good intentions she hadn’t been able to take her eyes off him. Tension emanated from the tight, burning knot low in her pelvis. Her vow to slice him out of the place in her heart he’d occupied for so long was wretchedly feeble in the face of the magnetic power he wielded over every last one of her senses.
Tough talk, a show of indifference to whatever lecture he might be about to hand out, was the only defence she could think of. Counter-productive to allow him to know she’d been already thinking along the lines of working to help the homeless, but didn’t know how to go about it.
Confessing that, admitting to inadequacy, would simply ensure he stayed around, driving her mad with wanting him, her sensible decision to stop loving him biting the dust with a vengeance. He would pull out all the stops to set her on the right road, make time for her, choosing the right charity, making sure the trustees agreed to her finding a small flat near her place of work, probably even visiting sometimes, checking up on her, doing what he would see as his duty—
‘Don’t worry about me.’ She essayed a tiny throwaway shrug and put her empty glass down on a handy side table. ‘I’m no longer your responsibility, remember. I might even marry Ollie,’ she threw in idly. A bare-faced lie—she wouldn’t dream of doing any such thing—but it would get Javier off her case. If she were an about-to-be-married woman his self-inflicted duty to her could be crossed off his list of tiresome responsibilities. ‘He’s asked me often enough.’ She levelled a hopefully dismissive look at him. ‘I’ll send you an invitation.’
Blind rage darkened Javier’s eyes, set his shoulders tautening beneath the soft fabric of his shirt. So her relationship with that low-life scum was more serious than he’d hoped. How could he stand by and see her ruin her life by marrying a man who, to his certain knowledge, had never done a day’s work in his rotten life, whose reputation locally was lower than a snake’s belly! The weird idea jumped back into vision. It wasn’t as crazy as he had at first thought.
‘You want to be married? Marry me.’
Some impulses were crazy. This was not. He could keep her safe from predatory males.
Silenced by shock, Zoe could only stare, her eyes widening by the second. How many times had her foolish heart driven her to dream up marriage-proposal scenarios? Millions!
At last she managed a strangled, ‘You can’t be serious!’
‘Never more so.’
Something inside her crumpled. It was what she had dreamed of for years. Yet—‘You don’t even like me,’ she accused thickly.
Javier released his breath on an incredulous sigh. Not like her? The Spanish in him brought his proud head high. ‘I’ve cared about you since you were a bereaved eight-year-old transplanted into a cold, unloving environment. I cared enough to take you off your grandmother’s hands. I admired your spirit when you dug your heels in and decided to go your own way—even if you had turned yourself into a fright,’ he admitted with one of those smiles guaranteed to take her breath away. ‘And it is precisely because I care about you that I’m suggesting we marry.’
Dared she translate ‘care’ into ‘love’? Unconsciously Zoe shook her head. But could she stop herself? Her bones tightened. Fine tremors attacked every inch of her tense frame.
Flaring black brows drew together as the episode in Spain came back to taunt him. From her attitude towards him this afternoon, her worrying relationship with Sherman, he was as sure as dammit that she’d outgrown that schoolgirl crush. In any event, it was time to spell out precisely what he had in mind.
‘Needless to say, it would be a marriage on paper. I wouldn’t expect you to share my bed. Simply my life and my home for the next two years when, with guidance, you’ll be able to prioritise your values and decide what you really want to do with your life and how best to manage your future inheritance. Naturally, an annulment would follow,’ he impressed gently, concerned for her.
He could see how her slender hands were shaking, even though they were tightly clasped together in an attempt to disguise it. And all the natural colour had ebbed from her face. His voice lowered with soft persuasion. ‘In the meantime as my wife you would be protected from the likes of Sherman, men
